re.match returns null although the string appears in the sentence

Question

I am trying to match a string 'hello world' to a sentence. I think that means it searches the sentence for that string and returns a value that indicates a success.

But when I try this code, all that prints out is 'None'.

import re
sentence = "why do we write hello world so often?"
match1 = re.match('hello world', sentence)
print match1

`if 'hello world' in sentence:`. If you need something more complex, you should look into fuzzy search. — Brobin, Jun 30 '15 at 15:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 30 '15 at 15:52

match looks only at the beginning of the string.

You should use search instead:

match1 = re.search('hello world', sentence)

Note that you shouldn't use regex for this specific task. hello world is a very specific text, you can use in to check if it's contained in a string. Regexes should be used when you have a pattern.

If you insist to use match, you should change your regex to:

match1 = re.match('.*hello world', sentence)

Now .* matches everything until the hello world token, and the regex "hello world" will match the string "hello world" in your sentence.

re.match returns null although the string appears in the sentence

1 Answers1